1 Wehrmacht: To the Bitter End (WW2) - Pt 5

Wehrmacht: To the Bitter End. Wehrmacht (Defence Force) was the name of the unified armed forces of Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe (air force).

The Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the SS (the Nazi Party's paramilitary organization), became the de facto fourth branch of the Wehrmacht, as it expanded from three regiments to 38 divisions by 1945. The SS was autonomous and existed in parallel to the Wehrmacht; Waffen-SS field units, however, were under the operational control of the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW) or the Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres, OKH)